Fritz Lang’s ‘Nibelungen,’ the Way It Was Meant to Be Heard

At the Konzerthaus last weekend, Fritz Lang’s two-film silent colossus “Die Nibelungen” was presented with its original soundtrack performed live by the ORF Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra. Gottfried Huppertz’s score, long neglected and not on Wagner’s level, is nonetheless impressive and tightly entwined with the film, giving each scene a distinct heartbeat.

It borrows Wagnerian leitmotifs but leans toward French late-Romantic colors; Kriemhild has a flowing theme that darkens in the second film while Siegfried and Gunther share a cue that turns mournful at Siegfried’s death. Lang and Huppertz first collaborated on the two parts, “Siegfried” and “Kriemhild’s Revenge,” before their later work on “Metropolis.” The production was costly and elaborate: painted and twigged sets evoked painters like Caspar David Friedrich and Arnold Böcklin, and the dragon was played by ten people inside a costume.

At the premiere the orchestra repeatedly fell out of sync with last-minute edits, and audiences were offered refunds.

Austria, Vienna

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